Michelle Dockery joins Bryan Cranston in Network

Directed by Ivo van Hove, Michelle Dockery will play Diana Christenson opposite Tony Award winner Bryan Cranston as Howard Beale in the world premiere of Network.

Lee Hall’s new adaptation of the Oscar-winning film by Paddy Chayefsky will play at the National Theatre from 4 November, performing in repertoire until 24 March 2018.

Michelle said, “It’s a wonderful feeling to be going back to the National after eight years. To be working with Bryan Cranston and Ivo van Hove on an adaptation of this brilliant film is a rare and exhilarating opportunity, I am thrilled.”

Howard Beale, news anchor-man, isn’t pulling in the viewers. In his final broadcast he unravels live on screen. But when the ratings soar, the network seizes on their new found populist prophet, and Howard becomes the biggest thing on TV.

Network depicts a dystopian media landscape where opinion trumps fact. Hilarious and horrifying by turns, the iconic film by Paddy Chayefsky won four Academy Awards in 1976.

Now, Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour) and director Ivo van Hove (Hedda Gabler) bring his masterwork to the stage for the first time, with Bryan Cranston (All The Way, for which he won the Tony for Best Actor, Breaking Bad and Trumbo for which he was nominated for an Oscar) in the role of Howard Beale.